A young journalist in Mauritania faces a possible death sentence after being convicted of apostasy for an article criticising the prophet Mohammed, AFP reported Monday (January 6th).

Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed was arrested January 2nd in Nouadhibou and “was convicted of lack of respect for the prophet”, a judicial source told AFP.

And then the private sector got involved.

In Nouadhibou, a businessman even offered up money to anyone willing to kill Ould Mohamed.

In describing the January 3rd incident, Nouadhibou-based journalist Mostafa el-Sayed told Magharebia that “businessman and preacher Abi Ould Ali, a resident of Nouadhibou, said during a protest against the offending article that he was willing to pay 4,000 euros to anyone who killed the young author, unless he announced his repentance within three days.”

Yet many who denounced the article were angered by the businessman’s incitement to murder, saying it pushed society towards terrorism.

Not to mention that lacking respect for “the prophet” should not be a crime in the first place, let alone a capital crime.

“Those who incite to murder want to terrorise us,” young researcher Salihy Ould Ab said. They are just a group of salafists and Islamists who want us to erase our minds and refrain from thinking and criticism.”

“They are inciting people to kill a young man just because he wrote an analytical article in which he referred to some of the positions of the Prophet Mohammed. This means that Mauritania is on the verge of entering an era of terrorism,” Ould Ab wrote on his Facebook page.

It’s good to know that there are sensible people in Mauritania along with the vigilantes and theocrats.

Of all the ways religion goes AGAINST the grain of the human experience, the religiously-mandated “Apostasy Laws” are absolutely the worst; they are the first tools of religious oppression and violation of Human Rights, the instruments to exercise extreme intolerance of dissent and different thoughts. It is unthinkable that some nations hold on to this regressive anachronism – more suited to the Dark Ages – even in the 21st century. *smh*

It is interesting that Cheikh Ould’s article criticising nasty old Mo is based in part on systematic discrimination against his own community, the Blacksmiths. He blames Mo/Islam for the unpleasant and deeply hierarchical country that Mauritania is. His family has denounced him of course . Poor guy is literally all alone.